Further plaudits for Sudden Light recording

Since the initial flurry of reviews soon after the release, our debut CD, Sudden Light, has garnered a number more positive accolades from across the classical music press.

Music Web International: “The sound they make is first-rate: the tone is fresh and firm; there’s excellent internal balance; and the diction is crystal clear”.

The good thing about the online reviews is, not limited by column inches, they go into a bit more detail on the disc with more of a commentary on individual tracks which is really gratifying for us to read and does help provide context about any negatives (which, as it happens, these longer-form reviews are almost completely without).

Robert Hugill on his blog Planet Hugill was also uniformly positive about the singing — “…a notable achievement from the Epiphoni Consort and throughout the disc their technical command of Bednall’s sometimes challenging writing always dazzles”.

Choir & Organ gave it 4 stars (out of 5) and generally liked it (“This debut CD establishes their credentials… the group is equal to the demands of of Bednall’s music with a bright, well-produced sound”) though made a similar observation about upper voices as Gramophone observing that we “occasionally sounded under pressure”. Well, fair enough! One could add a footnote that most of the pieces had top Cs for sopranos and we recorded on a sharp organ! But this is a great review to receive.

BBC Music Magazine is perhaps not as effusive as the others, but still largely positive. It describes highlights as Lux Orta, Everyone Sang, Te Lucis and Sonnet 98. It’s the only review to make a remark about lower voices, with a slight barb about tuning. I’ve listened to the whole thing a dozen times and this has never once struck me; a touch of blending — or even timbre — issues now and again, but I don’t remember tuning (in lower voices or any others) being a problem picked up by anyone during the recording sessions and it’s not been remarked on by other reviewers. However one shouldn’t dwell on this; I’m pleased to say it’s the only negative in an otherwise positive review (“a significant addition to the Bednall discography… fresh [with] considerable interpretive subtlety”).